Dr. Toph Marshall, Professor of Classics at the University of British Columbia, play director and actor, will present a set of fifteen plaster masks excavated from the site of Pompeii (destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79). These masks point to a theatrical tradition completely separate from the Greco-Roman tradition employed in all our surviving play-scripts. He presents the objects, classifies them, and explores the nature of the performances for which the masks were intended. An entertaining presentation you will not want to miss!

Dr. Lea Stirling, from the Department of Classics at the University of Manitoba, will focus on the fate of statues that adorned the public bath houses and the dwellings of the elite from the Roman imperial period to the 4th and 5th centuries. Her research suggests that the types of statuary chosen for public spaces differed from those that adorned private edifices, while changes in social beliefs and customs prompted an occasional editing of the sculptural decor, especially in the public bath houses. Read more »